1914- THE FIRST TRUE CHARACTER ANIMATION- Windsor McCay's
"Gertie the Dinosaur" premiered as part of a vaudeville act. Up to
then most U.S. animations were attempts to bring popular newspaper comic
characters to life, but Gertie was a new character never before seen. Some
critics had wondered if animated characters weren’t some kind of man in a
special suit, so McCay drew a dinosaur, a character that couldn’t possibly be
impersonated by a living thing.The
brilliant draftsmanship and timing of this film would inspire the generation of
Animation artists of the Golden Age of the 1930's-40s.

1915- THE BIRTH OF A NATION or The Clansman premiered at
Clunes Auditorium in Los Angeles. Film pioneer D.W. Griffith's racist movie was
considered for many years the first American feature length film. The discovery
in 1999 of a 1913 Richard III film predates it. Son of a Confederate veteran,
it’s been thought that Griffith was making a personal statement, truth is there
was a flood of films to mark the 50th anniversary of the Civil War and the book
the Clansman by Thomas Dixon was a best seller. President Woodrow Wilson (another
son of the Confederacy ) endorsed the film, when he called it :"History written with a thunderbolt
and I’m afraid all too true."

Birth of a Nations’ inflammatory imagery and this
politically incorrect Presidential endorsement helped a rebirth of the defunct
Ku Klux Klan, and caused an increase in lynching.But despite the film’s politics, it’s
technique influenced world cinema and established once and for all the feature
film length as the standard for all future motion pictures. Its original
running length was 3 hours.

D.W. Griffith in
latter years lost his fortune and became a drunken has-been. Watching him at
Chasen's Restaurant in the 1940’s beg MGM studio head Dore Schary for work, inspired
Billy Wilder to write SUNSET BLVD.

1928- Englishman John Logie Baird transmitted a still
television image across the Atlantic from England to Hartsdale New York. It was
a still image of a woman.

1961- Nebraska teenager and future movie star Nick Nolte was
busted for the first time. He was accused of selling fake Draft cards so his
friends could buy alcohol.